The decision to get clean and sober is a challenging feat. Unfortunately, drug rehabilitation services, including state-funded rehab, don’t always help the person with a substance use disorder. Sometimes, they hinder or make their situation much worse.
What Is a State-Funded Rehab?
Government or state-funded rehab programs claim that they offer low-income individuals affordable treatment for substance use disorders. However, that was not my experience or the experience of thousands of others seeking help. While I can’t accurately assess the entirety of the system, I’ve seen and heard enough to attest to the need for change.
What to Expect During a Typical Day in Rehab?
Thousands of drug rehabilitation centers allege that they provide individual therapy services, group counseling, mental health assessment, substance abuse education, continued-care planning, and more. But that’s not the reality for many, and that’s why sharing my story is prudent for those seeking the right options for their (or a loved one’s) recovery.
My Personal Experience in a State-Funded Rehab
I couldn’t wait to receive help with my opioid use disorder. I’d confessed to my family that my legal prescription dependency had evolved into heroin use and was grateful they would watch my little girl for the 28-day program my state insurance afforded me.
But I had no clue what I was signing up for or the danger attending the facility would do for someone with my disease. My family was told that I would receive an hour of one-on-one therapy daily with a licensed mental health professional, on top of group counseling sessions.
Furthermore, I’d be educated on underlying causes and equipped with healthy coping mechanisms to combat cravings and temptations. I desperately needed help in navigating how I got there and how to avoid returning.
The Circumstances of My Arrival
I’d made a mistake. A terrible decision to smoke a substance that seemed less threatening than what I once perceived as an intravenous-only drug. At that moment, I was suffering agonizing opioid withdrawal from my decision to stop filling my prescription.
I’d realized that after five years of my doctor upping my daily dose after a couple of motor vehicle accidents, I’d developed a severe addiction. So, I decided I was done and stopped taking my six-a-day Percoset regimen cold turkey.
Sometimes, the heart and mind are willing, but the body is weak. It didn’t work out that way for me. Instead, I tossed and turned from the unimaginable hell-on-earth we call withdrawal, begging God for mercy while simultaneously cursing him for the pain I was in.
Someone presented me with a cure for the horrific condition I was in, and I took it. Honestly, I believed I could use it that once to help me out of the torturous pit of misery I fell into.
I felt trapped. Constrained by fear and self-loathing, I needed out. But I didn’t realize that one-time decision would only drag me to unknown depths, searching for my rock bottom.
Now, I was eager to heal and desperate for help. There’s a term heroin addicts use to justify searching for their next fix: “I need to get well.” This time, I meant it in a literal sense. Unfortunately, my state-funded rehab experience was anything but — rehabilitation.
A Rude Awakening
In 2013, I attended American Behavioral Health Systems in Chehalis, Washington. From their initial mishap of sending me to the Spokane location — 353 miles away (a six-hour drive) — to having staff that stole from the patient’s belongings, the place was unprofessional.
Upon arrival, I learned quickly that I was in for a rude awakening. I was the only person there voluntarily, meaning everyone else was there to avoid a jail sentence. The jail was attached to the state-funded rehab facility.
The beds were metal framed bunk beds with plastic cot mattresses. Despite people being in serious withdrawal, newbies are forced to do so on the top bunks without safety railings on either side of them. One woman complained that her body was suffering from involuntary spasms (common in opioid withdrawal), refusing a top bunk.
They didn’t care and forced her to sleep in the top bunk. She fell off and seriously injured herself (I believe a broken bone). They had the audacity to accuse her of throwing herself off the bed so that she could go to the hospital and get pain meds. We all knew better. That poor woman begged for a bottom bunk before her accident.
The food served was the same slop that the inmates were being fed on the same jailhouse trays. I’ve never been to jail, but I was told by several of the young ladies and women there that that is what those nasty, thick, plastic abominations were.
We had a rigorous schedule outlined for us, but it wasn’t how our hours were spent. After wakeup and breakfast, our day was supposed to start at 9:00 a.m. with a substance education lecture. It was the only time of the day that the male and female patients were allowed to intermingle.
In addition, the schedule reflected group counseling, AA/NA meetings, individual therapy sessions, and other drug and alcohol services that weren’t received. We were very much treated like inmates, marched in and out for designated breaks, and shoved into a room all day long.
What My Typical Day at a State-Funded Rehab Looked Like
The day started with a dozen young women blasting music videos at full volume in the room where we spent most of our day. After making our beds, getting ready, and eating jailhouse breakfast, we crowded into a classroom setting with the men for an hour-long lecture about substance abuse.
The man running the facility and teaching the lessons was disorganized and unaware. For example, he was partway through a lecture before allowing my question. Only I didn’t have a question. Instead, I informed him that the information he was outlining was the same lecture the previous day.
After class, the women and men separated and went back to the rooms they spent most of the day. We were supposed to be in group sessions, but no one was monitoring either group of individuals. We were left to our own devices.
The problem with that was not only were we not receiving help with our substance use disorders, but we spent the afternoon trading drug stories, relishing in them fondly. That’s a massive no-no. It only creates cravings and the temptation to use it again.
It also provided ample time and opportunity for people like myself to become curious about needles. I was the only person there smoking heroin. The veteran users constantly reminded me that I was “wasting” it and “didn’t know what I was missing” by not injecting it.
Neither of those things is something someone trying to get clean and sober should be hearing as a curiosity develops to fall farther into the addiction instead of breaking away from it.
We stayed in the room until 8:00 p.m., when we were dismissed to do chores and get ready for bed. Even for meal times. Every night, when we were supposed to have AA/NA meetings at 7:00 p.m., we were instructed to get the few books they had and host the meeting ourselves.
That is eleven hours a day of unsupervised addicts doing nothing but talking about how badly they want to get high again, sharing tips on using, planning relapse, and having other unproductive and destructive conversations. We were occasionally handed worksheets to read and fill out without instruction or follow-up. I spent much of my time reading books to escape my situation.
The Top-Level Staff
As already noted, the staff was unprofessional. The man in charge was rarely available to talk about anything, disorganized and oblivious. The woman who was meant to give us one-on-one therapy sessions never provided any, excusing her inability to show us that attention by how chaotic and unorganized the facility was under his management.
She suggested he may have dementia but refused to retire. Something that, if true, is terrible but not the problem of the patients. It was apparent that her primary focus was gaining control of the paperwork, not patient care.
One time, she attempted to placate my demand for one-on-one attention by suggesting that I was more intelligent than the others there, as if intelligence has anything to do with defeating addiction.
I confessed I had childhood sexual abuse (CSA) trauma that I’d never unpacked but had manifested into unhealthy coping mechanisms and terrible behaviors that I was ready to heal from.
The shock I felt when she dismissed my trauma as “Something like 99% of people with an addiction deal have experienced” is unmatched. The implication was that because CSA is a common underlying condition of addictive tendencies, it wasn’t unique or a big deal.
She told me that if I was “serious” about getting to the root of it, I needed to read a book she handed me about CSA first. Only then was she willing to discuss anything. I concurred. Considering eleven hours of unsupervised time were spent daily, I read through the book that day.
She was stunned that I’d completed the book. But she didn’t like my admission: “It didn’t resonate with me.” The majority of the book discussed the abuse from the perspective of the most common relationship (father and daughter), and that was the farthest thing from being relatable to me. My dad was my hero and best friend.
She offered me no help for what is arguably my most significant underlying cause for addiction. Believe it or not, my shrieking at a spider was when I caught the most of her attention. I dismissed the fear as irrational, and I kid you not, she got down onto the floor and held a conversation with the spider crawling along the baseboard.
“Did you hear that, Mr. Spider? Elizabeth used cognitive thinking to determine her fear of you is irrational. Sounds like she’s doing better than she thinks. She’s going to be alright.” Are you serious? I’m still baffled to this day by her eccentric display of obliviousness. That fifteen minutes was the only one-on-one “therapy” I received, despite a promise for more.
The Front Desk Staff
The front desk staff had a combination of people who genuinely cared and others who were power-tripping off their positions. For example, an eighteen-year-old girl who had never used any substances was responsible for walking us outside on designated smoke breaks.
Without fail, she let us know how disgusting the habit was, and if she had her way, state-funded rehab facilities wouldn’t allow it altogether. I don’t remember who she was related to regarding the operation’s owners, but it was her daddy or an uncle. She had no business talking to grown people about something she knew nothing about. Her high-and-mighty, condescending attitude was unbearable.
The security guy was having sexual relationships with multiple female patients when I was there. He was easily manipulated for extra smoke breaks and favors because of it. All the women knew what was going on.
The night staff was something else. One woman was an obvious tweaker still in active addiction. Her jaw constantly jacked as she entertained becoming best friends with all of us. We received many extra breaks from her because she wanted to smoke, too.
She stole an entire carton of cigarettes from me, as well as packs from others, and was not fired. I was also never compensated for them, despite being told by the man in charge that I would receive a Wal-Mart gift card for the trouble.
Other front desk staff would turn their heads as young men and women visited together in the hall when they weren’t supposed to be. This behavior resulted in multiple rehab romances, note passing, and sexual relations in the shower room between patients.
The night shift would often spend the night being loud on their phones and laughing loudly enough that it would wake me and others up without fail. And if you came out of your room and called them out on it, they would laugh it off as nothing.
Finally, one staff member cared and went the extra mile for people. I am eternally grateful for her kindness. After reading The Hunger Games, I longed for the other two books in the series. With nothing but time to kill, I begged her to take some of my money and get me the books.
That night, I awoke to her putting the books and receipt on my bedstand. That gesture granted me two full days of avoiding the daily drug talk and unmonitored shenanigans that regularly unfolded.
Additional Concerns After Attending a State-Funded Rehab
As a thirty-year-old woman, I was appalled that that’s how tax dollars are being spent when not offering any actual rehabilitation and recovery. To voluntarily seek treatment, only to be treated like an inmate, was challenging.
Despite allegedly monitoring medications, one patient easily snuck me pieces of her Suboxone strips. They didn’t do a good job ensuring that didn’t happen.
The food was disgusting. Most of us survived on a cup of noodles, cereal, and candy that we purchased on our weekly grocery lists. Unfortunately, the staff didn’t monitor individual food storage nor provide us with a method of locking it up. So, I, and many others, frequently had food items stolen from other patients without compensation for their theft. I had makeup and clothing stolen from me, too.
Another incident involved a phone conversation with my father about how the state-funded rehab center wasn’t providing any treatment. I was sobbing because I was so disappointed in not receiving any therapy. The staff overheard (or monitored) my conversation, pulled me aside, and threatened that I would lose my phone privileges if I continued having those conversations.
In Conclusion
Don’t be fooled by fancy websites and slick-talking salespeople on the phone pretending to care. Tamara Beetham, who studies health policy at Yale University, shares a peer-reviewed study that demonstrates: “Many for-profit rehab programs charged inflated fees and used misleading sales practices to attract patients without evaluating their actual medical needs.”
These practices are dangerous because they care more about the bottom dollar than the patient receiving any actual rehabilitation. It’s, without a doubt, part of the reason we have such high relapse rates when people leave recovery treatment centers. Some studies report as high as an 85% relapse rate within a year of treatment.
Two days after leaving rehab, I relapsed with a girl I met there and quickly became an intravenous drug user. I abandoned my child, my Bachelor’s degree program, and my employment of thirteen years to chase bags on the streets.
The next time I went to rehab, my parents were scammed over the internet. I found myself at Narconon, a front group for the Church of Scientology that poses as an international drug rehab chain but is really an indoctrination camp where you practice Scientology Training Routines (TRs). So please, do your research.
Look up reviews that aren’t on the rehab’s website about their facility and pray about what inpatient or outpatient rehab services and facilities are actually helping people before committing to a Google search.
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Elizabeth Ervin is the owner of Sober Healing. She is a freelance writer passionate about opioid recovery and has celebrated breaking free since 09-27-2013. She advocates for mental health awareness and encourages others to embrace healing, recovery, and Jesus.